Jesus answered and
said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except one be born
anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God Marvel not that I
said unto you, You must be born anew (John 3:3,7).

For God so loved the
world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever
believes on Him should not perish, but have eternal life
He that believes on Him is not judged; he that believes not has
been judged already, because he has not believed on the name of
the only begotten Son of God (John 3:16,18).

You must be born again
(or anew).

There are three reasons for
speaking on that word to you. One, for the sake of anyone who
needs to know what it is to be born anew or again; two, for the
sake of those who do know what it is but who need continually to
be reminded and to keep before them what the difference is
between those who are born anew and those who are not; and three,
because you are constantly moving amongst those who know nothing
about it and are from time to time called upon to state or
explain or testify to the difference that being born anew makes.

We are very often in the
position which might, if we allowed it, bring us into some
weakness on this matter. For instance, we meet many very nice and
outwardly good people who are certainly not born again people and
they compare very favourably outwardly with many whom we know who
claim to be born again people. Sometimes the born again people do
not compare very favourably with many who are not born again and
such a fact may weaken our position and raise questions in our
minds and destroy the definiteness of our testimony, our
confession.

Then sometimes, especially for
younger people, the challenge as to what difference it really
does make to be a Christian finds them unable to give a very
direct and concrete answer. We find that we are led all round the
globe in an attempt to explain things. It is not very often that
you find a person, especially a young Christian, able to state
precisely and concisely what it means to be a Christian or what
it means to be born again. Now these are reasons for speaking to
you on this matter  You must be born again. I
am going to be just as simple and as plain as I can and approach
the subject along the line of three questions.

What it
is to be Born Again

Firstly, what is it to be born
again? While that is a very big wide question which can be
answered with a very great deal of material, we will confine it
to one simple answer, for being born is, after all, a matter of
blood, and you can gather a very great deal of the mystery which
seems to surround the Bible teaching about blood into this one
fact, that you cannot interchange blood with any vivifying,
life-giving, health-giving value or prospect. You cannot change
the blood of different species, that is, transfer the blood of
one species to another. If you do, you not only reach deadlock,
you do damage. You cannot pass animal blood into the human system
with any real value  there is no such thing as a
transfusion from a beast to a man. You never get anywhere by that
means; it is to no purpose at all but rather does damage. Every
species has its own blood and that blood is locked up to that
species and must not be transferred to any other species. The
blood in the Bible, as we know, is representative of the life and
when it is said that in Jesus Christ, or through faith in Him, we
will receive eternal life, that is only the effect of the
symbolic language and sacrament of drinking His Blood. Whoso
drinks My blood has eternal life (John 6:54), and that
means that we are receiving the life of  may I use the word
about the Lord Jesus?  a particular species. There is no
species in existence in this universe like the Lord Jesus; He is
a unique order of creation, an exclusive order of creation. He
represents something which is not to be found anywhere else and
being born anew is receiving the life of another order of
creation of which He is the first and representative.

What is it then, to be born anew
or again? It is to receive another and altogether other life, and
the deep fact, truth, reality about a true born again child of
God and about all such, is not in what they are naturally,
outwardly. It is that, right deep down at the centre of their
being there has been imparted something which is altogether
different from what they are in themselves and altogether
different from what all other people are. However good they may
be naturally, the difference is there. You and I know quite well
that in ourselves the difference is not complete and manifest,
but we know that there is a fundamental difference, that there is
that which makes the difference and it is a difference which is
not in any way forced or strained but it is as natural as
anything can be to this new creation. We know that something has
happened in us that has made the difference between us and others
and that basic fact is constantly making itself known in us. It
is like a new kind of intelligence, a new kind of consciousness
and conscience which is all the time discriminating, pointing out
the differences, constraining or restraining something there that
has happened. There is the difference and it is this other life
of another order which is the order of Gods Son which has
made the difference, and to be born anew is that.

The difficulty with many
Christians, not only with young Christians, but many others is
that, under severe strain, pressure and trial and when this
natural life is being provoked or strained for some reason or
other; perhaps by physical disorders and infirmities and
weaknesses, perhaps by pressure from without. Under given
conditions the natural life seems to be so strong still on the
wrong side, on the evil side, and the old things of that natural
life make themselves felt and assert themselves. Then we are
tempted by the enemy to ask the question, Well, after all, what
difference does it make to be a child of God? Is there anything
really in this matter of being a new creation, of being born
again? What is the difference?

The answer is deeper down, much
deeper down, than our own natures. What we are naturally in
ourselves remains, but there is a new creation. It is very
important to get your emphasis upon the right word. When the
apostle writes, If any man be in Christ (and our
Authorized Version has failed us here when it says, he is a
new creature or a new creation). The Revised
helps us, but even then it does not underline the important word.
It says, If any man is in Christ, there is a new creation
(2 Cor. 5:17). You want to put under the word there a
thick black line. Where? There, in Christ; there is a
new creation in Christ; and it is just there in Christ, where we
are in Christ, what we are in Christ, when we are in Christ, not
when we are in ourselves, but when we are in Christ. It is there
that there is a new creation. It is what is in Christ that is the
new creation.

We will not stay with that
further, but I want you to realize that there is a difference and
that difference we know. It is that difference which has become
evermore real to us as the mark of our spiritual growth, the
difference between what Christ is and what we are and what man is
as a whole by nature, the difference, because we have received
(to use the symbolic word) a new blood, a different blood, or, to
use the proper word, the actual word: another life, a different
life. What is it to be born again? It is that.

Why We
Must Be Born Again

Why must we be born again? Why
was the Lord Jesus so emphatic? Note this double imperative
 Verily, verily; truly, truly, I say unto you... Why? Well,
the answer, I think, is found in the complete statement. Except
a man be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Now,
there is no reference to the Kingdom of God in the context,
therefore one of two things must be taken account of. One, that
Nicodemus and the people whom he represented needed no
explanation as to the fact of the Kingdom of God. That is, it was
no mystery, it could be taken for granted that they knew about
the Kingdom of God. Nicodemus knew something about the Kingdom of
God. It was not introducing a strange subject so far as he was
concerned. But, whether the Kingdom of God is a new idea or not,
the point is this  the Lord Jesus assumes without any
explanations at all, without stopping and saying, Now look here,
there is such a thing as the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of
God is so-and-so  giving a long explanation of the Kingdom
of God. No, He assumes that the Kingdom of God is the thing which
matters, is the thing which counts, is the ultimate and the
supreme thing, and His attitude is simply this  Look here,
Nicodemus, ultimately, eventually, pre-eminently, the Kingdom of
God is the thing in view; the time is coming when there will be
no other kingdom but the Kingdom of God. All other kingdoms will
have been met, judged, destroyed, blotted out, and this universe
will be the Kingdom of God! So the thing that matters is whether
we are going to be in or out. There will not be an alternative to
the Kingdom of God. We will either be in the Kingdom of God or we
will be out: ...should not perish, but have eternal life.
Perish means to go out of what God is going to bring about, to be
outside of what God is going to institute, to miss it, to be out
of it, to have lost it, to be judged unworthy of it.

The thing which matters, then,
is the Kingdom of God, for it will be that which will be all
pervading and all-inclusive at last. That is why we must be born
anew, because to get into that Kingdom is no mechanical matter.
It is a matter of birth, it is a matter of nature. That Kingdom
will be constituted by a God-nature, the nature of God imparted
to all His subjects and all the citizens of that Kingdom. It will
be a matter of constitution. The difference is to perish being
outside, and to have eternal life being inside, and you only get
this life through birth.

So then, if the Kingdom is the
thing which eventually and ultimately matters, then that is why
we must be born anew, and there is no getting into the thing
which matters other than by new birth, that is all. So you simply
say, when you are challenged  What does it mean to be born
anew, to be a Christian? It means to have received another life
more inward and deeper down than the life of nature and which is
gaining ground, steadily gaining ground and making differences,
and that is why I do not do certain things that you do. It is not
that I have decided that I shall not do these things, that I have
drawn up a list of things which I should do and should not do,
can do or cannot do, ought to do and ought not to do. It is
simply that there has taken place in me something which has made
these differences and I am following the law of another life
which is at work within, and it is no merely legalistic thing at
all. That is the difference, that is what it means to be born
again and why we must be born again. In the end there is only
going to be one Kingdom, the Kingdom of God, and you get into
that Kingdom by being born anew. You are either going to be out
or in and if you are going to be in, you must be born anew.

How We
Are Born Again

Then how are we born again? What
do we have to do to be born again? Well, in the first place, it
is by acknowledging the fact of our sinful nature. No, it is not
an acknowledging that we have done some wrong things, that we
have committed sins  that is not good enough. A lot of
people think that if you are going to become a Christian, it is a
matter of confessing that you have done this, or that, or the
other which is not right, and asking God to forgive and saying
you will not do it again. That is not it. It is not sins
but sin, it is not what we do or do not do, it is what we
are. And no one ever gets through with God by acknowledging a
certain number of sins even though they might make a mountain of
them that is a countless number that they would confess. That is
not the way through with God, because God knows a great deal more
than we can count about ourselves. What He calls for is
acknowledgment of the fact of a sinful nature, what we are in
ourselves, and then, in the light of that, the acknowledgment of
Christ as Gods Son.

There is a very important matter
bound up with that. You expected me to say, the acknowledgment of
Christ as Saviour, and I did not say it; the acknowledgment of
Christ as Gods Son. You look at the New Testament; that is
what men have to acknowledge from Pentecost onward, that Jesus is
the Son of God. Why? Son implies something, it implies a father
and it implies a begotten one, and that brings you immediately
into touch with this very fact of the begetting of a family
relationship, of getting into a family. The door into that family
is the Lord Jesus, the Firstborn. He is the way in and so you
have got to acknowledge Him, not as a great prophet, a great
teacher, a good man, the best that ever lived, but you have got
to acknowledge that unique relationship, that we are not all the
children of God in that same way by nature. There is no such
thing, in the essential sense, as the universal Fatherhood of God
and brotherhood of man. That is all nonsense and rubbish, it does
not get you anywhere. This Fatherhood is a peculiar Fatherhood,
this sonship of Jesus Christ is unique sonship, and this is an
inclusive family relationship and there is only one way and that
is through Him in that position as Son.

Oh, Satan knows quite well all
about that. Probably there is nothing through history that Satan
has laid himself out to do more thoroughly than to deny that
essential sonship of Jesus Christ. The one thing at which he has
aimed his blows and all his cunning, skillful attention through
the ages has been at the sonship of Jesus Christ in its
utterness, in its exclusiveness, in its uniqueness. All the false
doctrines of history have had that somewhere lurking in them. So
the acknowledgment of Jesus as Gods Son for our salvation
is the way of new birth.

And then a definite act of
committal and acceptance by faith. I am not one who commits so
many sins or sins of this kind or that, but I am a sinner by
nature. Jesus Christ is Gods Son of another order. I, by a
definite act of committal and acceptance, take a faith
relationship with Christ to bring me into that family which is
another, altogether other kind of family!

Now, can you grasp that? What is
it to be born again? Will you answer that simply? Why must we be
born again? How are we born again? Well, if anyone here does not
know what it means to be born again, that is it very briefly. You
know the way now. If any of you have had difficulties over this
matter of the difference between very nice, good people who make
no profession at all of Christianity and Christians whom you feel
let down the whole thing, or because of what you still find in
yourself. You wonder, Does it make so much difference after
all, what really is the difference; it does not seem to me that
those who are Christians even come up to the level of many who
are not! What is the difference, what does it mean? There
is an answer and a very real answer. I have not given all the
facts, but there is a real answer. And why? Well, there is no
reason for anything more imperative than that we should be born
again because the Kingdom of God is the thing that is going to
govern everything. Whether we are in the Kingdom of God or not is
the most important matter that ever anybody could have to face.

Well then, if it is true, and if
I am persuaded or anyone is persuaded that it is something to
consider seriously, what about it, how is it done, what is the
way? Can you give that answer? Have you all come that way? May
the Lord just use this very simple word for our confirmation,
clarifying and new joy.

First published by Witness and Testimony Publishers, 1935. This version published in the "Golden Candlestick" magazine, Vol. 132.